GO BUILD A WELL

6 years ago

Investors Lobby to Oust Bill Gates

Three of Microsoft’s 20 top investors are pushing for Bill Gates to step down as chairman of the board, 38 years after he co-founded the company. The as-for-now anonymous shareholders—who hold over 5 percent of the $277 billion company’s stock—worry that Gates’s position could limit the ability to take Microsoft in a new direction. Gates currently owns about 4.5 percent of Microsoft’s stock, but sells around 80 million shares a year and will be all sold out by 2018. In the last half-decade, he has increased his philanthropic role with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, vaccinating children, lifting people out of poverty, etc. Not a bad way to retire.